In This Rogues' Gallery, Photographs Are Just the Start

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

Published: November 26, 2006

Fifteen years ago, Arthur Nash made one of his first purchases of gangland memorabilia when a dealer in rare photographs showed him what he said was the first published picture of the gangster Arnold Rothstein. Before long, Mr. Nash, who was 19 at the time, was searching for photographs of other notorious figures, like Al Capone, Machine Gun Jack McGurn and Abe Reles.

Mr. Nash's interest in gangland lore broadened, and he eventually assembled a collection of 1,500 items documenting the lives and often brutal times of people involved in organized crime.

Some of the items are linked to murders: for example, a barber chair from the old Park Sheraton Hotel in which the mob boss Albert Anastasia was sitting when he was killed in 1957.

Mr. Nash also owns a fedora that belonged to the man thought by many to have shot Anastasia: Joey Gallo. He was wearing the hat on the night in 1972 that he was fatally shot inside Umberto's Clam Bar on Mulberry Street.

The oldest items date to Prohibition and the most recent to the early 1970s. Mr. Nash said he researched the provenance of everything he buys. Many of the items, he said, came from the estates of gangsters or law enforcement officials.

''These are odious criminals,'' said Mr. Nash, 34, explaining the odd appeal. ''But organized crime has earned almost a reverential standing with portions of the American public.''

For two months starting in August, Mr. Nash used a storefront next to Umberto's to display part of the collection in an exhibit called ''Made in America.'' He said that he was considering similar exhibits in other cities, like Baltimore and Las Vegas.

When the collection is not on display it is stored in the Chelsea Hotel, where Mr. Nash lives in an apartment once occupied by Bob Dylan. Every so often, he invites guests over to see part of the collection, which he estimates is worth $1.5 million.

''I began by delving into old photo archives,'' he told two recent visitors. ''I realized that if you got to the right people you could rescue those pictures from the dustbin of antiquity.''

Some of those pictures were hanging on Mr. Nash's walls. There was one of Reles, known as Kid Twist, a killer who wielded an ice pick and in 1941 somehow tumbled from a sixth-floor window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island after agreeing to testify against Anastasia and other leaders of the Brooklyn crew known as Murder Incorporated.

Another photograph showed Bugsy Siegel, whom Mr. Nash said his grandmother met in the 1920s, when the gangster occasionally visited an East New York tailor shop run by Mr. Nash's great-grandfather, an immigrant from Ukraine.

''I was intrigued.'' Mr. Nash said of his grandmother's stories. ''That's where the seed was planted.''

Also in the room were a pale red bullet-pocked brick from the Chicago garage where the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was carried out in 1929, and a fingerprint sheet from an arrest of Louis Buchalter, a leader of Murder Incorporated.

Mr. Nash bought it from the estate of Burton B. Turkus, a Brooklyn prosecutor who wrote a book about Murder Incorporated. Buchalter, known as Lepke, died in the electric chair, but the charge on the sheet was disorderly conduct and the penalty listed was a $2 fine.

Although most of Mr. Nash's collection comes from the traditional mob strongholds of New York and Chicago, he also has photographs and objects that emanate from less celebrated underworld haunts. For instance, he has a knife and a blackjack said to have been taken by the Detroit police from the Purple Gang, a ruthless crew of bootleggers and hijackers said to have murdered 500 people.

Mr. Nash has several photographs of Charlie (Lucky) Luciano, taken after he was deported to Italy in 1946. Mr. Nash said he bought them from a great-nephew of Luciano's. He also has unusual relics from Los Angeles: a set of monogrammed silver-colored silk bedclothes replete with button-up shirt and a double-breasted jacket, which once belonged to Mickey Cohen, who was the target of gunshots and bombs but died of natural causes in 1976.

The same, of course, could not be said for Gallo although the fedora he was wearing when he was killed, an olive Royal Stetson with a wide black band, appeared to be in fine shape. Mr. Nash also has the typed sermon from Gallo's funeral. The priest reminded mourners that ''Jesus Christ himself was a controversial character.''

Mr. Nash pointed to the steel barber chair with pink leather cushions where Anastasia spent his last moments, and the arm that was broken off when the man known as the lord high executioner of Murder Incorporated lurched out of it. Mr. Nash said that the chair continued to be used in the shop for years, then was bought by a collector in St. Louis and was later owned by, of all people, Henny Youngman.

Photos: Arthur Nash with the barber chair in which Albert Anastasia was sitting when he was killed in 1957. Also in Mr. Nash's collection is the fedora Joey Gallo was wearing when he was killed in 1972. (Photographs by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)